Post/Author/DateTime	Post
JustKim 12-01-04, 02:52 AM	I have really wanted to like Whispers of the Vampire's Blade. When I first got it and read the introduction and background, I was impressed. The high-maintenance combats were a little intimidating, but I was willing to give it a shot. I didn't want to listen to people who hated the adventure for its railroadiness, and while that's generally not a problem with my group, so many other problems have cropped up over play that I can't keep quiet about it any longer. First of all, the pacing is terrible. For 16 days the party is on the road, and for roughly two days afterward the brunt of the adventure happens. For what constitutes 90% of the adventure, we get half a page of information. The town of Zilspar, which the party must travel through on their way and so, too, must Lucan, is not mentioned in the slightest. For a month the adventure constisted of rolling for wandering monsters, and I'd like to think I made it enjoyable, but this is not the mark of a good adventure. The adventure also recommends rolling every hour, meaning through sheer volume of encounters characters will be 5th or 6th level by the time the adventure finally continues. That's a very harrowing journey though Zilargo, considering the nation is described thusly: ".. but the climate is pleasant, the wildlife mild, and few bandits or other major threats endanger travelers." Funny, I would call an average of 1.5 life-threatening encounters per day endangerment. Darguun was less dangerous. Why the Dark Lanterns don't simply spring for an airship is beyond me. The horses are too slow to have any chance of catching up to him, while an airship could spot the coach from the sky and quickly collect Lucan. The magebred horses are much more expensive than a round-trip ticket, so it makes no sense. No attempt is made to rationalize the need for travel by horseback and damned if I could think of one if my players ever call me on this plot hole. Finally we're ready to get on with the actual adventure, and already there are problems, big problems. The road encounter with Lucan depends on the party traveling at night. Because of the frail horses the party can only travel 8 hours a day, why would they be traveling at night? The answer is that they wouldn't, and I've had to change things around to force them to. After the fight of course, Lucan will try to get away while Grilsha will probably be captured. There is no way Lucan can make it 160 miles to Trolanport in one night, so what does he do? Apparently Mr. Noonan forgot that vampires are obliterated in daylight. He's out in the wilderness with no ride, and if somehow he manages to find a daylight-proof hole to climb in he's going to have to keep it up every night for the next week because on foot he is very slow. Yet the adventure makes no note of Lucan's lateness, and somehow expects him to beat the party to Trolanport. How?! Worse is the sneaking suspicion that I'm going to have to lead my players by the nose to get them in that masquerade. I mean why would they? It's invitation only, their representative papers won't do them any good, that's a pretty clear message that PCs are not meant to go inside. Why not simply wait outside for Lucan to show up, where you can actually ambush him? With a detect undead spell or three this is completely feasible. And all this is only a quarter of the way into the adventure.
Dryder 12-01-04, 06:13 AM	...Worse is the sneaking suspicion that I'm going to have to lead my players by the nose to get them in that masquerade. I mean why would they? It's invitation only, their representative papers won't do them any good, that's a pretty clear message that PCs are not meant to go inside. Why not simply wait outside for Lucan to show up, where you can actually ambush him? With a detect undead spell or three this is completely feasible. And all this is only a quarter of the way into the adventure. Hi! I presently prepare the adventure and I think it will be loved by my players. Anyway, you are right, if you get the feeling of railroading your PCs, but in this case it's ok, because they are hunting down Lucan and therefore there is only one way for them to go, that is, after Lucan! In this case railroading is not my problem. The Random-Encounter-Problem I solved in just don't roll for them but just throw one at the party if they get bored... which doesn't happen often in my Eberron Campaign! Just don't roll for random encounters and you're fine! The Horse-Problem is, well - a problem. I just told my players, that presently all airships are booked out and therefore they got magebred horses to have at least a chance. My players took this story, but I don't know what they thought of it... ;) Lucan being a vampire and being out there during day... (ROAD BATTLE, p.8): Well, I let my PCs catch up with him at dusk (as written) and after he escaped, I let him find an isolated, outlying farm near the end of night, where he killed the farmers (no childs here) and laid down for the day. Thereafter he flew (gaseous from) to Trolanport while his sister took the only horse in the farms barn and came after him to Trolanport. My only Problem with the adventure was this damned APE at the beginning. Why the hell would Viorr Maelak sit at his desk with his back towards the ape (in the greenhouse) and the ape not attacking him... Where did he get the ape from and how... That's so far out that I didn't came up with a solution. I just skipped the encounter and made Viorr throw an agent of the DarkLanterns at them. During the fight someone screamed:"Be carefull, we need this bastard alive!". This will be Viorr. This fight happens on one of Sharn's bridges... The one Viorr sends at the party is a counter agent who didn't know, that Viorr came to know about this. So he told the agent he wants to check his loyalty. If he dies, Viorr has no problem with that... But all in all, JustKim, you're right - there is a lot of work to do before running it. But I think it's still a great adventure. I let you know (if you like) hpw my group liked it...
ThanisKartaleon 12-01-04, 06:17 AM	Not to mention that for some reason a vampire's immunity to mind-affecting effects only seems to function when it moves the plot forward. Though this may just be a problem with how undead and intelligent magical items are written. And the sword's not even that great, anyway. My suggestion: Get Garrow more involved. He likes to have others do his dirty work, have him there from the beginning. The great thing about him is that he can sit around all day changing and perfecting his minor change shape ability until he rolls a 20. So, his disguise result is always gonna be 34 (or 44 if 20s on skill checks are 30s in your game). Have an airship be available, but then have Garrow approach the PCs when they are beyond the gaze of the Lanterns and tell them that there's been a change of plans, and they have to take horses (that he provides). The airship's still available, but unforseen things happen if they ride on it... What I do like about this adventure is how detailed the setup for each encounter is. Unfortunately, there's problems in that, too. Far too many NPCs are not statted, and at times the d20 rules get abused for seemingly no reason at all (though I do like the idea of humanoid swarms...). Frankly, I wish Keith had done all the adventures in this path.
Dryder 12-01-04, 06:22 AM	Not to mention that for some reason a vampire's immunity to mind-affecting effects only seems to function when it moves the plot forward. Though this may just be a problem with how undead and intelligent magical items are written. And the sword's not even that great, anyway. Yeah, you have a point there. Just pretend Lucan is not yet used to his new form... And at the end he beats the sword and not just for a while... And you're right - Garrow is cool!!! Good idea to use him from the beginning! I will do that!
Kid SixXx 12-01-04, 11:24 AM	Why the Dark Lanterns don't simply spring for an airship is beyond me. Why should the Dark Lanterns spring for an airship? They are paying the party to stop Lucan, and probably expect a band of adventurers to take care of their own transportation. If the Lanterns felt that Lucan was worthy of their full attention (or had a real clue about what had actually happened to Lucan), they'd go after him themselves and not bother with adventurers, would they not? Finally we're ready to get on with the actual adventure, and already there are problems, big problems. The road encounter with Lucan depends on the party traveling at night. Because of the frail horses the party can only travel 8 hours a day, why would they be traveling at night? The answer is that they wouldn't, and I've had to change things around to force them to. Here is where you should have made use of the "Someone Knocks Down The Door" part of the module. The best thing to do is to make the party have a heightened sense of urgency, as well as make them fear for their lives so that they will be creative on their travel choices. After the fight of course, Lucan will try to get away while Grilsha will probably be captured. There is no way Lucan can make it 160 miles to Trolanport in one night, so what does he do? Apparently Mr. Noonan forgot that vampires are obliterated in daylight. He's out in the wilderness with no ride, and if somehow he manages to find a daylight-proof hole to climb in he's going to have to keep it up every night for the next week because on foot he is very slow. Yet the adventure makes no note of Lucan's lateness, and somehow expects him to beat the party to Trolanport. How?! There is a tactic established in the module where Grilsha uses her Wand of Darkness to create a sphere of Darkness around Lucan so he can function in open daylight. If Grilsha is with him, she'll do this so Lucan can travel a bit easier until the pair can make better arrangements. If Lucan is alone, then just allow the Soul Blade to create the same darkness effect. It's not like the sword does anything remarkably special anyway, and if the sword is compelling Lucan to take it somewhere, you'd think that the sword would also have a mechanism to make sure the swordbearer makes it to said location. Worse is the sneaking suspicion that I'm going to have to lead my players by the nose to get them in that masquerade. I mean why would they? It's invitation only, their representative papers won't do them any good, that's a pretty clear message that PCs are not meant to go inside. If your PC's excuse for not crashing the party is "We don't have invites," then that has to be the most timid group of non-adventuring adventurers I've ever seen. :D In all honesty, I had problems with this encounter as well, so the PC's used a a few Gather Intelligence rolls to figure out where Lucan might show up, and went from there. This would be a good place for the Dark Lanterns to step in as well. I find it amusing that you think that the Lanterns should pony up for an airship, but haven't considered using them to help the PC's get into an exclusive costume ball. ;) Why not simply wait outside for Lucan to show up, where you can actually ambush him? With a detect undead spell or three this is completely feasible.. If you're playing Lucan smart (before he was a vampire, he was also a Dark Lantern himself), he may expect an ambush, as the spell will detect Lucan, but not Lucan's sister.. Or the children of the night he may summon.... or any innocent people Lucan may dominate to throw in the PC's way. I am one of the people that complains the loudest about how terribly linear WotVB is, but the module is terribly easy to fix with a bit of preparation and creative tinkering. My biggest problem was getting my PC's to make the quantum leap in thought to figure out that Lucan might take the Lightning Rail after the Airship crash. That part took lots of belief suspension and did indeed kill some of the fun of the session.
Radiating Gnome 12-01-04, 01:20 PM	My group is on the Lightning Rail train -- the cliffhanger at the end of the last session was seeing the parties of warforged boarding the train. I honestly forget how I edged my group towards the train -- it wasn't too hard, just a matter of pointing out that there was very little else around here, except the town and the lightning rail. They spend the night in town, decided to check out the train, were accosted by the dominated guards, and from that point on they were pretty sure they were on the right track. Of course, the fighting left about half the party confined to their private room on the train, but that just makes the game interesting. One thing I did do -- Lucan made one of the PCs into a vampire (and now an NPC). During the airship battle, the party's Artificer was clever enough to ignore the fight up on deck, make himself invisible, and hide down in the cargo hold waiting to see if Lucan made an appearance. When he did, the vampire caught the poor PC all alone, dominated him, stripped him of his equipment, and then sent him up on deck to scout around. The PC ended up getting a flying skiff and using it to help Grilsha escape (not that she needed it). The other PCs were left behind trying to figure out what had happened. By the time the party got on board the train, the Dominated Pc was a vampire (at that point I was using Vampire Spawn stats for him). He was sitting off by himself in one of hte lounge cars when a couple of PCs, exploring the train, came upon him. Lucan was using his domination ability to see through the PC's eyes, and commanded the PC to speak for him. So there was a very entertaining conversation, followed by a quick scuffle. The PCs involved tried to grapple the spawn, got a negative level for their trouble, then the spawn went gaseous and escaped. The best advice I can give you with Whispers is to know the adventure as well as you can, and use it as a starting place. Usually, with a little redirection, you can handle anything your PCs throw at you. And, ultimately, if they manage to face off with Lucan and the Sould Blade -- and defeat him -- then the adventure ends. Big deal. Using the random encounters for the long ride from Sharn to Trolanport was an interesting exercise for my group. Most of the encounters were very easy to avoid, given the speed of the PCs horses. The one encounter they had that was worth mentioning was one where I rolled high on the encounter table, had to roll on the kicking in the door table, and ended up with the mummy dude. . . somehow on the road to Trolanport. I was moving fast, so I just put him on a horse, in a robe, trying to catch up to Lucan, but I wish I'd had the sense to make the horse undead as well. Anyway, one of the PCs ended up with mummy rot, which gave the party another reason to want to get to Trolanport fast. -rg
JustKim 12-01-04, 02:22 PM	Why should the Dark Lanterns spring for an airship? They are paying the party to stop Lucan, and probably expect a band of adventurers to take care of their own transportation. It seems like they should to me because the cost of taking an airship out to where Lucan is, picking him up during the day and taking him back is much less expensive than the horses and much faster. Yet the king's intelligence agency is content to let adventurers chase after their most prized information as slow as they like, trusting them to do the right thing if they ever catch up without any supervision. It's hard to believe. The best thing to do is to make the party have a heightened sense of urgency, as well as make them fear for their lives so that they will be creative on their travel choices. I'm not sure how it works in your group, but in mine, if PCs are afraid for their lives and have only an 8 hour window of travel they do it during the day when they can anticipate attacks. Only the shifter has lowlight vision, nobody has darkvision, traveling at night makes them sitting ducks. There is a tactic established in the module where Grilsha uses her Wand of Darkness to create a sphere of Darkness around Lucan so he can function in open daylight. I saw that, but the darkness lasts for 30 minutes at a time and daylight lasts for 16 hours a day. There aren't enough charges for half a day if Grilsha is somehow not captured, which I think is doubtful. I suppose the darkness effect may as well be the second change I've had to make to the sword, the first being doom "always active". How does that even make sense for a targeted spell with medium range? I'm having to assume it should be bane.
Nightshade 12-01-04, 02:24 PM	I haven't run the adventure yet but when I do, I plan on having the Dark Lanterns inform the players that they should NOT take an airship from Sharn because the airship platforms are constantly and easily watched by the spy agencies of all the foreign nations. Their passage will be noted and they may be discovered as agents of Breland. PC's are used rather than Dark Lanterns because they don't know how much of their organization is compromised and don't know if they can trust their own agents.
Kid SixXx 12-01-04, 02:42 PM	Yet the king's intelligence agency is content to let adventurers chase after their most prized information as slow as they like, trusting them to do the right thing if they ever catch up without any supervision. It's hard to believe. That Breland expects that gold will guarantee the PC's loyal? Not really. Even so, the PC's should fear crossing the Brelish government more than they should fear opposing Lucan. If the PCs are smart, they'll use this as an opportunity to solify their relationship with the Brelish crown, and possibly earn themselves a few favors later on. I'm not sure how it works in your group, but in mine, if PCs are afraid for their lives and have only an 8 hour window of travel they do it during the day when they can anticipate attacks. Only the shifter has lowlight vision, nobody has darkvision, traveling at night makes them sitting ducks. If villains are properly prepared, heroes are sitting ducks no matter what. It stands to reason that a wise party would use the cloak of night to conceal their activity just as their foes would. I saw that, but the darkness lasts for 30 minutes at a time and daylight lasts for 16 hours a day. There aren't enough charges for half a day if Grilsha is somehow not captured, which I think is doubtful. I wouldn't expect Grilsha to use the entirety of the wand to allow Lucan to travel through the day. Just enough to get Lucan to a place where he could be fairly safe. 4 charges from the wand is 2 extra hours of travel, and she might be smart enough to carry multiple wands. I'm not picking on you or anything, as I had to do LOTS of tinkering to make parts of the adventure make sense, much less make it flow in a meaningful manner. It's annoying that you really can't play WoTVB as written, IMO, and I feel your pain on that front. The module should have included some contingencies, or at least stated that it was a skeletal framework that needed DM polish in order to run properly.
zerotkatama 12-01-04, 02:51 PM	As to Lucan seeming to lose his immunity to mind-affecting spells and abilities, remember that an Intelligent item gaining dominance is not stated as a mind-affecting effect. (DMG, p. 271)
Kid SixXx 12-01-04, 03:03 PM	As to Lucan seeming to lose his immunity to mind-affecting spells and abilities, remember that an Intelligent item gaining dominance is not stated as a mind-affecting effect. (DMG, p. 271) Indeed, neither item dominance, nor dominance of undead thralls is covered as a mind-altering effect, IIRC. If it were, Lucan would have had immunity from the Vampire Lord to whom he was a thrall, but he did not. Matter of fact, I seem to recall seeing a snippet where the Vampire Lord to whom Lucan is a servant was actually confused as to what caused her to lose her dominance over Lucan.
ThanisKartaleon 12-01-04, 04:22 PM	As to Lucan seeming to lose his immunity to mind-affecting spells and abilities, remember that an Intelligent item gaining dominance is not stated as a mind-affecting effect. (DMG, p. 271) Yeah, I know. Like I said, it's more an issue with how undead and intelligent magical items are written. From a roleplaying perspective, Lucan (all vampires, really) seems to have selective immunity to domination/charm.